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<div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Pamela McLean</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:pamela.mclean@dadamac.net">pamela.mclean@dadamac.net</a>></span><br>
Date: Mon, Aug 22, 2011 at 7:02 PM<br>Subject: On returning from Dark Mountain<br>To: <br><br><br>When people ask what I do, I have no label for it. <br>I can't give the "right kind of answer"<br>I hear others saying words that have shared meaning - photographer, film-maker, writer, poet, crofter, professor, architect, activist, engineer....<br>
I have no one-word or two-word answer to give.<br>I can try a phrase that serves instead of an answer.� "It depends who's asking" or "It's a bit complicated" or simply "I'm a life-long-learner".<br>
<br>So how long have I been doing it - this thing with no name?<br>Ten years, at least ten years.... and that ten years built on all the things I have done before.. mostly things with no label.<br>�<br>I can try a fuller answer.<br>
I can tell you what I am doing now - and what others are doing that we started together - I can tell you of one fruit from the seeds that have been planted. <br>I can share with you the sweetest fruit that I have at this moment.<br>
But to savour that fruit you need to know its story.<br>You need to know the sweat of the labourers, the ground that was hard to till, the failed crops, the trampled crops, the crops that were watered with tears.<br>How else can you savour the tiny precious fruit that I would share with you. <br>
<br>What do I do? <br><br>I fill the time - and space - that is allotted to me.<br><br>I spend my time. I invest it. I fritter it. I do what I do.<br><br>(Is it really "my" time?.. who "owns" time?� is it borrowed time? shared time? a resource not mine to squander? )<br>
<br>I am simply me, doing what I do, and finding our what it is as I go along.<br>I can only struggle to share something of "What I am actually doing (or thinking) now,"<br>Or what I have done<br>Or what I hope to do. <br>
<br>But that is not what you mean when you ask me� "What do you do?"<br><br>Do you really want to know? Do you really want to hear? Sharing what I do is hard to do in any reasonable fragment of time. <br>There are too many different strands<br>
Too many interconnected ideas<br>Too much involvement in practical work and parallel ongoing analysis of it<br><br>In some ways it is easier to share my imaginings (because imagining creates the "larger space" in which the "actual doing" takes place.) But people who express their� imaginings are artists, and artists have skills and avenues of expression that I do not have - so I cannot share thoughts or visions or dreams. <br>
<br>If I was painter I would paint you pictures <br>If I was a sculptor perhaps I could express it in three dimensional forms<br>If I was a film maker - then I could share so much, so quickly, so concisely<br><br>But I am simply me.<br>
And I am back from Dark Mountain<br>Influenced to risk more - to break my prose into shorter lines - and to use more fanciful turns of phrase. <br>Back from the wonderful elastic timelessness of something that, on the calendar, claimed to be only a weekend. <br>
A time appreciated all the more richly for seeing where it stands between our shared pasts and the unknown country that is our future <br>A time, a brief yet eternal moment, when we appreciated being where we were, when we were, and being there together. <br>
<br>If I was an artist - I could share... whatever it is that true artists do share.. that inner cry.. that expression of being...<br><br>But I am me.<br><br>Acting out my life.<br><br>I have no choice but to share ideas the slow way<br>
<br>Doing what I am doing, trying what I am trying, connecting with those I connect with, sharing ideas, sharing moments, and making digital footprints.<br><br>(Thank you everyone at Dark Mountain Festival - I appreciated being with you)<br>
<br>References:<br>
<ul>
<li>Making the invisible visible. Managing the digital footprint of development projects <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/undpeuropeandcis/making-the-invisible-visible-managing-the-digital-footrpint-of-development-projects" target="_blank">http://www.slideshare.net/undpeuropeandcis/making-the-invisible-visible-managing-the-digital-footrpint-of-development-projects</a></li>
<li>Dark Mountain - <span></span><span>UNCIVILISATION 2011: The Dark Mountain Festival</span> - <a href="http://unciv2011.eventbrite.com/?utm_source=eb_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=event_reminder&utm_term=event_title" target="_blank">http://unciv2011.eventbrite.com/?utm_source=eb_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=event_reminder&utm_term=event_title</a>�</li>
<li>Some of my digital foot prints - Dadamac.net -� <a href="http://www.dadamac.net/" target="_blank">http://www.dadamac.net</a>, LearnByDoing -� <a href="http://learnbydoinguk.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://learnbydoinguk.blogspot.com/</a>, dadamac's posterous archives��� <a href="https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Aol41estuotndGRrLXA5cHBsOExEQW40YzFEWHdIb3c&authkey=CMWIod8F&hl=en_GB#gid=0" target="_blank">https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Aol41estuotndGRrLXA5cHBsOExEQW40YzFEWHdIb3c&authkey=CMWIod8F&hl=en_GB#gid=0</a><br>
</li></ul></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>P2P Foundation: <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net/" target="_blank">http://p2pfoundation.net</a>� - <a href="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/" target="_blank">http://blog.p2pfoundation.net</a> <br>
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